Here’s a stone-cold lock prediction. At some point during the season, the title of this post will be used as the headline to some story about Pitt’s freshmen players. Trust me. No editor over the age of40 is capable of resisting using that cliched headline thinking of how sly they are to slip in some “Who” reference.
At SI.com, Grant Wahl includes Pitt as one of the schools with an intriguing freshman class so far this season. The Big East seems to have a lot of teams playing freshmen for significant minutes — Syracuse, Louisville and Marquette.
An article on how Pitt’s young players did well in their first “road” test. Kind of hard to take seriously. It does note, that Chevon Troutman has been in town. Not sure if there will be a sighting at the Saturday game.
In an article that can only be described as brutally mistreating numbers to make the theory work there is this piece declaring that moving Krauser to shooting guard and splitting the point guard duties between Ronald Ramon and Levance Fields to be a success. Now, I happen to think the move is a good one, but primarily as a way to get the best players on the court at the same time. The piece, though, tortures the numbers, makes bad comparisons and leaves some big gaps.
Pitt’s standing in two statistical categories tells the tale. Last season, Pitt was 11th of 12 teams in the Big East in turnover margin and tied for eighth in assist/turnover ratio. The Panthers committed 14.4 turnovers per game while their opponents committed just 12.9 per game (-1.55). They had 439 assists and 419 turnovers (+1.05).
So far this season, the Panthers are near the top of the league in both statistical categories. They are third in turnover margin (+5.00) and second in assist/turnover ratio with 90 assists and 64 turnovers (+1.41).
Where to start. First of all, the numbers are wrong the data sets used don’t even include the Duquesne game, so the numbers are only based on 5 games. Sheer laziness to not add those numbers in (not to mention failing to note that in the article). Not that comparing 6 games instead of 5 to 29 is a significant improvement, but it immediately lowered Pitt’s standing a notch or two in the conference rankings — a component used to base the argument.
Pitt’s turnover margin is now listed at +3.50, 5th in the conference — a 2 spot drop. The assist/turnover dropped to 4th in the conference with 107/80 (+1.34).
As for some actual comparisons, the 2004-05 numbers are correct for turnovers committed and allowed. Notice, however, that the actual numbers of turnovers/game this season aren’t mentioned. That’s because part of the premise: that Pitt is taking better care of the ball; is questionable to this point. Pitt is averaging 13.3 turnovers/game so far. Even with the bad skewing of the numbers, that is only 1.1 turnover less per game than last year. The big rise is more that the defense (and the overall quality of the opponents) is different. Pitt’s opponents have had 16.8 turnovers/game to this point. That is where the big swing in turnover margin is being generated.
Near the end of the article, he finally and briefly notes that the numbers through the first 6 games of last season also reflect improvements. Note that he used 6 games and in his early comparisons he was just using the 5 games played this season.
You know the really sad thing. The argument could have been made far more effectively just by comparing the first 6 games from last year to this year. Seriously
per game averages —- Assts. —- TO —— A/TO — TO Margin
2004-05, 6 games — 19 (114) — 15.5 (93) — +1.22 — +0.5 (96 TO for opp.)
2005-06, 6 games — 17.8 (107) — 13.3 (80) — +1.34 — +3.50 (101 TO for opp.)
Last year, Pitt had some sloppy, early play as the numbers show. This year, despite the youth and inexperience Pitt is taking much better care of the ball — better than 2 fewer TOs/game. A chunk of it also has to do with more 3 guard line-ups and a little lessening of the emphasis to go inside. Those comparisons, though, do a much better job of making the point.
I hate bad stats.
